Today in Labor History August 28, 1955: Teenager Emmett Till was brutally murdered on this day in Money, Mississippi, for speaking "inappropriately" to a white woman. The brutality of the murder and the lack of justice for his family helped to mobilize opposition to segregation in America. An all-white jury acquitted Till’s killers, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J. W. Milam. The next year, both men publicly admitted in an interview with Look magazine that they had tortured and murdered the boy. The magazine paid them selling $4,000 (equivalent to $43,000 in 2022) for the story. Between 1876 and 1930, over 500 African Americans were lynched in Mississippi, alone, and over 3,000 across the South. A memorial marker for Emmett Till, erected in 2006, was defaced with "KKK", and then completely covered with black paint. 8 more markers were erected at sites associated with Till's lynching in 2007. Some of these were vandalized, too. One of the signs received over 100 bullet holes. In 2018, three University of Mississippi students were suspended from their fraternity after posting to Instagram a photo of them posing in front of the bullet-riddled marker, with guns.
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